Consumers’ Sense of Farmers’ Markets: Tasting Sustainability or Just Purchasing Food?

Elisa Giampietri,Dieter Koemle,Xiaohua Yu,Adele Finco

doi:10.3390/su8111157

Elisa Giampietri, Dieter Koemle + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su8111157

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Abstract

Sustainable food consumption has attracted widespread attention over the last decades by scholars, policy makers and consumers. In line with this, farmers’ markets (FMs) have the potential to encourage sustainable agricultural production and consumption. By reducing the number of actors and distances along the food chain, these alternative food systems foster the reconnection between farmers and consumers and contribute to different social, economic and environmentally sustainable goals. This paper provides insights into how consumers’ sustainability concerns are related to their motivation for shopping at FMs. By means of a choice experiment, we analyze the determinants of consumers’ preferences for buying apples at FMs. We are particularly interested in understanding how attitudes towards the three sustainability dimensions are related to consumer preferences in this context. We find that consumer attitudes towards direct contact with producers, contributing to farmers’ income, and environmental benefits, can be directly related to product characteristics that are specific to FMs.

Highlights

Food purchases at short food supply chains (SFSCs) are increasing all around the world and in Italy as well, being considered a more sustainable alternative to highly specialized, resource intensive modern agri-food supply chains [1,2,3]
Shopping at farmers’ markets can, a priori, be assumed to be desirable but not preferred by consumers, so studying what is behind buying preferences represents a key issue in order to draw a new consumer profile to improve and support FMs’ marketing and policy strategies
We focused on examining the role of sustainability dimensions in influencing food purchasing preferences, investigating whether consumers, who hold the view that supporting farmers’ income and the direct contact with producers are important, as well as contributing to environmental sustainability by means of purchasing organic food, were more likely to purchase apples at FMs

Summary

Introduction

Food purchases at short food supply chains (SFSCs) are increasing all around the world and in Italy as well, being considered a more sustainable alternative to highly specialized, resource intensive modern agri-food supply chains [1,2,3]. This paper aims at investigating how the three dimensions of sustainability (i.e., economic, social, environmental) are relevant for forming consumers’ preferences when purchasing apples Following this objective, this article aims at determining whether consumers’ preferences for some SFSCs’ distinctive aspects (e.g., local food origin or direct interaction between farmers and consumers) are reflected in willingness-to-pay (WTP) [8]. 218) especially considering distribution and consumption, in line with consumers’ “quality turn” (i.e., increasing demand for better food quality and safety) [17,18] Envisaging both the reduced geographical distance (i.e., transportation distance between production and consumption known as food miles) and a small number of intermediaries between the producer and the consumer [19], SFSCs contribute to preserve both economic activities in areas with climatic and geographical constraints (e.g., by maintaining food production and processing) and the culture and identity of those places. It is worth noting that FMs represent a potential for the revalorization of rural areas (e.g., by maintaining rural communities and employment in remote areas) [26] and an engine for new opportunities to peri-urban agriculture, which is threatened by urban sprawl in many countries [27,28]

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